Out of Africa, Into Asia

Anatomically Modern Human Dispersals into and through South Asia

This research network is investigating the
adaptations and archaeological signature of anatomically modern humans that
left Africa and arrived in India,
from where their descendents moved on to East and South
East Asia.

In terms of archaeological fieldwork, this has involved
new excavations and sampling programmes on the Late Pleistocene of Southern India
(especially Kurnool District) and central India (especially the Son Valley of
Madhya Pradesh). Sampling has included some palaeoecological work, especially
on phytoliths on which Dorian Fuller has acted as an adviser to the primary Indian
laboratory.

In addition, this research has raised new hypotheses about the
timing of dispersal out of Africa being
earlier than often assumed. The project has undertaken to provide an explicit
set of hypotheses for this dispersal including an interregional reconstruction
of vegetation patterns from East Africa through Southeast
Asia for key climate periods (Oxygen Isotope Stages 5, 4 and 3).

Dorian Fuller has played a key part in inferring vegetation patterns in India
and adjacent regions from the available direct evidence (pollen cores and
palaeoclimatic proxies) and indirect evidence (species disjunctions), with
important implications for how hunter-gatherers would have been able to
subsist, or not, in these vegetation zones.

Funding

A
major Leverhulme research grant to M. Petraglia (Oxford), “The Toba super-eruption and its impact on human
populations and ecosystems” (2006-2009)

Australian Research Council
grant (to C. Clarkson) “Assessing lithic evidence for the impact of the Toba
Super-eruption (74,000 years ago) on long-term cultural, biological and
ecological histories in the Indian subcontinent” (2008-2012)

British Academy International Partnership Grant, 2010-2012, to M. Haslam (Oxford)